Are there examples of the CMS (as a home page) in action? (VB5)

Tue 7th Mar '17, 8:39am

I have used VB4 on and off with various websites over the years, and one of the best features was/is the CMS portion.
Writing articles is what I like to do, and I've seen comments here that have suggested there's no need for Wordpress because VB5's CMS is so robust.
So far I haven't seen anything like that in the way of examples here.... everyone shows off what their forum looks like and that's it.

Why VB5 and not just stick with VB4 since that CMS looks good? Facebook. Maintaining an easy way for people to connect is important and VB4 won't be able to do this for much longer.
Another reason is VB5 looks better and that is very important with the younger audience who expects a certain look to an interface. VB4 is more dense and compressed while VB5 is "airy" and phone pleasing. VB5 wins.

Something I read is the category view from VB4 is gone (and I used that a lot). It was clean, simple and fast..... great for a home page. Is this true?

If the answer is use a different CMS....... is there a best way to marry VB5 with WP or Joomla? Being able to reply at the bottom of an article and/or be directed into a VB5 forum thread for further discussion would be perfect (all using the same credentials, whatever they are).

Content is king, and content is articles..... forums are the interaction step AFTER someone is reeled in by an entertaining article (at least in my line of work).

Beyond Facebook, are there other SSO plugins with VB5? I noticed people are using Discuss accounts more and more (especially with local news and political websites) and in today's heated political environment that some people want to talk more is a big potential win for us. Does this exist?

Any feedback on what you did for your articles driven website would be very appreciated.

I can't really recall/point to VB5 sites that use the Article page as their main landing page but a different between VB4 and VB5 is that the "CMS" in VB5 works on all pages where as the CMS in VB4 was limited to Article Pages.

VB5 kind of combined the idea of categories and sections, something I never was a fan of in VB4 to begin with. You can see the Articles page for this site, still lists Categories: https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/articles

I don't have any experience settings up VB5 with a 3rd party system, I wouldn't recommend it, the articles section is sufficient and to add all that complexity for what will be at best a minor improvement in usability seems like a waste of time.

There are no other SSO options besides Facebook, certainly none official. and no 3rd party ones I am aware of for VB5.

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One more question: I was bee-bopping around on the trial VB5 site, and I see the layout templates but I don't see where to create a new one from scratch in the site builder.
The site builder is really cool but such a big change..... by any chance is there a way to suck a html/css template into VB and create a new custom template from that? Sort of like an automatic grid manager where it figures out "oh a box goes here, here, and here. Now go ahead and throw modules or widgets or pictures into the boxes". I remember drawing in the grid manager in VB4 but I don't see that here.
Know what I mean?

I'm going to get a license and fiddle with it.... I broke my trial VB5 by trying to adjust what is displayed as the home page (it defaulted to the forum as a home page and I unsuccessfully tried to make a "front page" like in VB4.

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In Site Builder if you go to Edit Page then choose the Change Layout option you can choose from 10 built in options including single solid page, solid page with sidebar on either side, 3 columns, and various other options. Once you choose one of those layouts you can drag and drop modules anywhere you want, but there is no automatic creation as you described.

I have used VB4 on and off with various websites over the years, and one of the best features was/is the CMS portion.
Writing articles is what I like to do, and I've seen comments here that have suggested there's no need for Wordpress because VB5's CMS is so robust.

You don't need a CMS to do that, just using your forum as a cms + forum
What I am talking about it can be found on our webmaster forum http://www.webmastersun.com/
And of course is you can do that with your vB4 or vB5 but it needs a bit more customizations.

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I have used VB4 on and off with various websites over the years, and one of the best features was/is the CMS portion.
Writing articles is what I like to do, and I've seen comments here that have suggested there's no need for Wordpress because VB5's CMS is so robust.
So far I haven't seen anything like that in the way of examples here.... everyone shows off what their forum looks like and that's it.

Why VB5 and not just stick with VB4 since that CMS looks good? Facebook. Maintaining an easy way for people to connect is important and VB4 won't be able to do this for much longer.
Another reason is VB5 looks better and that is very important with the younger audience who expects a certain look to an interface. VB4 is more dense and compressed while VB5 is "airy" and phone pleasing. VB5 wins.

Something I read is the category view from VB4 is gone (and I used that a lot). It was clean, simple and fast..... great for a home page. Is this true?

If the answer is use a different CMS....... is there a best way to marry VB5 with WP or Joomla? Being able to reply at the bottom of an article and/or be directed into a VB5 forum thread for further discussion would be perfect (all using the same credentials, whatever they are).

Content is king, and content is articles..... forums are the interaction step AFTER someone is reeled in by an entertaining article (at least in my line of work).

Beyond Facebook, are there other SSO plugins with VB5? I noticed people are using Discuss accounts more and more (especially with local news and political websites) and in today's heated political environment that some people want to talk more is a big potential win for us. Does this exist?

Any feedback on what you did for your articles driven website would be very appreciated.

Thanks!

I used to run a CMS Joomla and had a forum solution Kunena. The site used a homepage, but once the forum became the focus of my site it was just an additional click for people to do in order to even see the forum. First impression is everything, and an additional click loses many people. My traffic in the forum doubled once I made the forum the homepage.

I think you'll need to decide which is the main focus of your site. If the forum, I definitely recommend you use the forum.

Regarding using Joomla and Vbulletin, your best best is to go the Joomla extensions directory located on their website and look for a Vbulletin "bridge". That way people that sign up in your Joomla site will be signed up in your Vb forum and vice versa.

I thought about doing this headache, I say that because whenever updating Joomla or the forum you'll also have to wait for the bridge to update in case there is some change. Think about all those updates you'll need keep track of, Joomla, Vbulletin, Bridge, Templates, and whatever extensions you have for either platform.

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